The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may or may not constitute prior art.
Autonomous vehicles are vehicles that have a high degree of automation that can transport passengers or items from one location to another. A typical autonomous vehicle uses a variety of sensors such as cameras, sonic sensors, radar, LiDAR, GPS receivers, and inertia measuring units to detect the vehicle's exterior surroundings and the vehicle status. An onboard controller determines an appropriate path based on a desired destination input by a user of the vehicle and uses the information gathered by the sensors to instruct the vehicle's drive control system to maneuver the vehicle to the desired destination.
SAE International Standard J3016, “Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to On-Road Motor Vehicle Automated Driving Systems”, issued January 2014, provides six (6) levels of automation, from SAE Level 0, No Automation, to SAE Level 5, Full Automation. For certain higher SAE levels of autonomous vehicles, the onboard controller may be programmed with a self-parking routine in which the onboard controller would analyze the surroundings, identify an available parking space, calculate a proper parking path, and control the driving systems of the vehicle to navigate the vehicle through the calculated parking path into the parking space. The autonomous parking routine may be initiated and executed by the controller upon receiving a request from the user of the vehicle. The request may be inputted to the onboard controller by pushing a real or virtual button on the dashboard, by voice command, and/or by sending an electronic signal from a portable electronic device by the vehicle user outside of the vehicle.
To ensure the safety of the vehicle user, there remains a need to determine the location of the vehicle user to confirm that the vehicle user is not within the calculated parking path of the vehicle before initiating the parking routine. There is also a need to determine the locations of pedestrians in the near or predefined vicinity of the vehicle before initiating the parking routine or aborting the routine if a pedestrian should cross the calculated parking path.